Lake St Lucia Estuary Mouth Intervention

[Alf]

Humans shouldn’t intervene with nature

[Klipspringer]

I don't understand why this can be done without environmental impact assessment prior to opening. This has more far-reaching consequences than any new lodge in a National Park.
And any minister (or administrative body of the protected area) might not be able to understand this thus has to trust what scientists have to say.

Always a difficult trade off between restoring natural processes and commercial/livelihood interests once decade-long human-made eco-system changes have been done. And in this case a huge amount of international and local money involved.

[Alf]

I wonder how much money was stolen through corruption with that amount of money involved

[Lisbeth]

Many economical interests, like sugarcane plantations, fishing etc.

[Lisbeth]

Creecy asks for full report on Lake St Lucia breaching row

By Tony Carnie• 19 January 2021

Environment, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Barbara Creecy has asked for a detailed report justifying the controversial recent decision to artificially breach the mouth of South Africa’s largest estuarine lake.

In the wake of mounting criticism from expert scientists and conservationists — and praise from several other interest groups — Environment, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Barbara Creecy has confirmed that she met iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority chief executive officer Sibusiso Bukhosini to discuss the controversy and also requested a report from him about the circumstances and justification for the decision.


iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority chief executive officer Sibusiso Bukhosini. (Photo: iSmimangaliso Wetland Park Authority)

As the managing authority and custodian of the UN World Heritage Site, iSimangaliso receives funding from Creecy’s department and reports to her office. Bukhosini, a former municipal manager at uMkhanyakude District Municipality and Umhlabuyalingana Local Municipality, took over as iSimangaliso CEO in September 2018.

Prior to Bukhosini’s appointment, former CEO Andrew Zaloumis helped to secure multi-million rand funding to restore the ecology of the water-starved lake and to institute a new policy against further artificial breaching of the estuary mouth.

The decision to reverse decades of human manipulation of the lake’s natural ecological processes followed a series of expert studies by hydrology and estuarine scientists who warned that the lake was gradually being starved of fresh water because of a decision taken in 1952 to prevent the Mfolozi River entering the lake.

One of the primary reasons for separating the Mfolozi from the lake was to safeguard commercial sugar farms, as their land was developed in the river floodplain and was back-flooded at times when river levels rose. The farmers challenged iSimangaliso’s new policy, but their objections were dismissed after legal action in the High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal.

However, after a prolonged drought and the decision to reconnect the Mfolozi River to feed the lake, the mouth has been closed by a sand bar for several years.

Fishermen have been pressing for the mouth to be breached to allow more sea fish to enter the lake. Hotels and estuary tour operators have complained that the level of reeds and muddy sediments near the lake mouth have increased, making it difficult to operate boat-based hippo and crocodile tours. Farmers have also reiterated their concerns about back-flooding.

To address some of these concerns, iSimangaliso held a stakeholders’ symposium late in 2020 and a task team was appointed to investigate possible solutions. According to iSimangaliso, the task team recommended that interventions were needed to “nudge” the system into reopening naturally.

On 4 January 2021, when mechanical earthmoving equipment arrived on the beach and began digging a new channel to the sea, iSimangaliso officials and St Lucia village civic leaders insisted that the equipment was merely there to “skim” the sand berm at the estuary mouth.

When the diggers opened a new pathway to the sea two days later, seven expert scientists wrote a letter to Creecy requesting an explanation on the apparent policy flip-flop on artificial manipulation — characterising the decision as a “deviation from scientific, evidence-based management decisions” by the iSimangaliso authority

While Creecy has yet to answer the scientists’ letter of concern, her department has responded to questions sent by Daily Maverick on 6 January. Department spokesman Albi Modise said Creecy was now “engaging” with iSimangaliso.

“The Minister in this regard held a meeting on Friday afternoon with the CEO of the Management Authority. The management authority has the responsibility to manage the estuary in line with the Estuarine Management plan. This plan allows for “exceptional” circumstances under which specific interventions may be undertaken. The Minister has asked the management authority to give her a report on the circumstances which the management authority believes justifies the intervention.”

However, neither the department nor Creecy responded to several other queries about the affair — including perceptions that iSimangaliso had acted surreptitiously by seeking to persuade the public that it simply wanted to “nudge the system” by lowering the berm at the estuary — when the intention was to break it open to the sea.

They also did not respond to queries on who paid for the breaching operation, the cost of the operation, and the name of the contractor, nor to a request for the names of the ecological experts who supported or sanctioned this artificial breaching.

At least three scientists who took part in the symposium have said they did not support the decision to breach, while two other scientists at the meetings have declined to comment.

So far, only one of the scientists at the symposium has publicly defended the decision. Responding in writing to email questions, Prof Alan Whitfield told Daily Maverick that his role in the task team decision was as a scientific adviser on ecological issues. Whitfield is Emeritus Chief Scientist at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB).

“Yes, based on my ecological research experience on the St Lucia system since 1975, I supported the decision to ‘nudge’ the system towards increasing the connectivity between the estuarine and marine environments.”

On whether he had watched video clips of the breaching operation and whether he had an opinion on whether the contractor correctly followed the recommendations of the task team, Whitfield said:

“The task team recommendation was that the berm should be skimmed at a specific place (to a St Lucia Bridge plate level of 1.62m) and that if this level was exceeded the berm could be breached… I live in the Eastern Cape and was therefore not part of the supervisory team dealing with the skimming operation or breach event,” he said, adding that he had also not watched any of the video clips published on social media.

On whether he believed that the breaching was a setback to the original policy objective to end artificial breaching, Whitfield said:

“The current artificial breach was recommended by me to allow the nursery function of Lake St Lucia for marine fish and invertebrates to be restored. The St Lucia system constitutes 50% of the estuarine nursery area for the whole of South Africa and has effectively been unable to perform that function over the past two decades. The current opening of the mouth will flush some of the accumulated sediments from the estuary into the sea, but a major flooding event will be required to fully flush the system.

“The goal of future restoration/management interventions should be to promote connectivity between the joint estuary mouth and the sea, but also to facilitate removal of excessive sediments brought into the system by the Mfolozi River. It is difficult to achieve both objectives at the same time and on this occasion, we have prioritised restoration of the marine and estuarine biota within the system. Future opening events should prioritise sediment removal (if catchment rainfall and run-off events cooperate!) and this may well result in the flooding of low-lying agricultural land.”

Meanwhile, the non-government iSimangaliso Action Group has also sent questions to Creecy, her department and the park authority to explain why no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was apparently conducted before the breaching.

The group, which campaigned against attempts to mine sand dunes at St Lucia in the 1980s, said:

“This area is again under threat as some local financial interests appear to have placed pressures on the iSimangaliso Authority to abdicate from their highest responsibility to the natural environment and to the international World heritage body at UNESCO.”

Environmental attorney and doctoral student Melissa Strydom has also lodged an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act requesting a copy of the environmental authorisation sanctioning the artificial breach and copies of any records confirming adherence to the requirements of the relevant management plans. DM

[Lisbeth]

Prof Alan Whitfield told Daily Maverick that his role in the task team decision was as a scientific adviser on ecological issues

But he has not followed the operation nor has he watched the videos. He must take a real great interest in the issue

[Richprins]

A bit late, Minister!

[Lisbeth]

Barbara Creecy acts on Lake St Lucia breaching storm

By Tony Carnie• 4 February 2021

In the wake of the controversial bulldozing of the Lake St Lucia mouth, Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries Barbara Creecy has taken action, announcing that an independent scientific panel will be appointed to probe what happened – and also advise on what should be done to guide future policy decisions.

Many salt-water anglers, local tourism operators and sugar farmers cheered triumphantly when heavy earthmoving equipment ripped open the blocked river mouth of South Africa’s largest estuarine lake last month.

By re-opening the lake to the sea after a prolonged sand bar blockage, large volumes of saltwater began to re-enter the lake, while similar large volumes of fresh water flowed out to sea.

But several estuarine and hydrology experts and environmental groups reacted with dismay to this artificial manipulation of ecological processes, demanding answers from Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries Barbara Creecy about what they saw as a major blunder and inexplicable policy volte-face by the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority, statutory guardian of the World Heritage Site.

While estuarine river mouths are dynamic systems which are alternately blocked or open to the sea according to natural water cycles, the St Lucia system was managed artificially for nearly six decades from 1952 onwards – largely for the benefit of nearby sugar farmers, anglers and holidaymakers visiting the village of St Lucia.

The manipulation involved permanently diverting the course of the giant uMfolozi River, bulldozing the mouth open on a regular basis and also dredging a channel for ski-boats and other watercraft.

But that all changed about 10 years ago when a team of hydrologists, ecologists and estuarine experts advised iSimangaliso to stop meddling with natural processes, while also warning that the lake was drying up steadily because the diversion of the uMfolozi was robbing the lake of more than 50% of its previous freshwater flows.

iSimangaliso commissioned a series of ecological, social and economic studies to examine the impacts of the new “hands-off” approach to future management of the system, and defeated two major court challenges by sugar farmers who feared the new approach would lead to more frequent flooding of cane fields established in the flood plain of one of South Africa’s biggest rivers.

The end result was that millions of rands of funding was sourced from the World Bank’s Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and other sources to reconnect the uMfolozi to Lake St Lucia and remove millions of tons of sand and silt that had been deposited near the estuary mouth by decades of artificial dredging.


Earthworks machinery used on 6 January 2021 to reopen Lake St Lucia to the sea. (Photo: Supplied)

But on 6 January 2021, everything changed again when iSimangaliso brought in several large “yellow machines” to break open the mouth – seemingly in direct contradiction to the newer hands-off management policy where the mouth would be allowed to breach naturally once sufficient levels of fresh water in the lake and feeder rivers pushed open the sand bar.

stlucia-letter-MAIN-1536x783.jpg (68.99 KiB) Viewed 600 times

Top water scientists fuming after ‘God’s yellow machines’ smash open Lake St Lucia mouth

An estimated R747-million was reported to have been spent on a bold plan to restore the natural ecology of one of South Africa’s first World Heritage sites after 60 years of continuous human interference. Now a group of top water and ecology scientists have asked environment minister Barbara Creecy to explain who authorised the sudden policy flip-flop on artificially breaching the Lake St Lucia mouth.

Now, in response to a series of reports in Daily Maverick and an open letter by seven expert scientists and other groups, Creecy has moved to address the controversy by appointing an independent scientific panel.

“The Minister has noted widespread public interest in this matter, as well as differing scientific views on the most ideal management strategy for the conservation and preservation of this significant World Heritage Site,” her department said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Accordingly, after consultation with the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority, the Minister has decided to appoint an independent scientific panel to advise on:

• The significance/impact of the opening of the estuary mouth and how this relates to the implementation of the GEF 5 project interventions and the St Lucia Estuary Management Plan;

• The exceptional circumstances, as defined in the Estuarine Management Plan, that led to the decision to open the mouth, including those of an environmental, social and economic nature;

• The impact of the mouth opening on 6 January on the functioning of the estuary system and the wetland system as a whole, as well as the associated environmental, social and economic implications; and

• Guidelines for the immediate and ongoing management of the system.”

The department said the names of the panellists would be made public once the appointment process was concluded.

In her statement, Creecy also confirmed that in response to her request, she had received a formal response from the park authority last week indicating that the decision to reopen the mouth followed discussions at a multi-disciplinary symposium hosted by iSimangaliso last October.

The symposium had acknowledged that the St Lucia Lake system was a complex and dynamic socio-ecological system, and that its natural functioning was critically important – but that it had also been necessary to set up a multi-disciplinary task team to discuss the “best adaptive management strategy for the estuarine system” and to remove “the unnaturally high beach berm so as to allow the system to breach unimpeded”.

[Lisbeth]

After having spent R747-millions! And if it will be decided to close it again other R747 millions?

[Richprins]

Departments adore a "hands-off approach"!